


Summer Mood

by johnwatso



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Post-Season/Series 03, Romantic Angst, They're terribly in love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-01
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-04 10:29:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,384
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5330852
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johnwatso/pseuds/johnwatso
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Love is… it’s so contrary to everything we know to be true,” Sherlock whispers. He’s lying on top of the duvet, still in his clothing, even though it’s close to 4am. </p><p>“I fucking love you anyway,” John replies.</p><p>They’re facing each other, their eyes having adjusted to the dim light filtering in from the street outside long ago. The air is cold and alive, the way it always is before the sun begins to rise.</p><p>It’s the first time anybody has ever told Sherlock Holmes that they love him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whatsortofcase](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsortofcase/gifts).



“Love is… it’s so contrary to everything we know to be true,” Sherlock whispers. He’s lying on top of the duvet, still in his clothing, even though it’s close to 4am. 

“I fucking love you anyway,” John replies.

They’re facing each other, their eyes having adjusted to the dim light filtering in from the street outside long ago. The air is cold and alive, the way it always is before the sun begins to rise.

It’s the first time anybody has ever told Sherlock Holmes that they love him.

————————

John comes home in the beginning of summer. Sherlock never believed in the magic of the changing seasons, but he thinks there might be something to it now. He thinks everything that leads John home is magic.

They discussed it before, obviously, but John wasn’t expected to arrive until tomorrow. Sherlock isn’t even sure if there are clean sheets on his bed upstairs. He stares at John, holding his bags, looking light for someone saying goodbye to a former life. 

“You gonna help me or just look at me all day?” but it isn’t unaffectionate. It may as well be, _I’m glad to be home_.  

Sherlock takes his bag from him, carries it up the steps to his old room. It smells of dust in here, even though Mrs Hudson has been cleaning. The sun through the curtains illuminates the little particles and suddenly Sherlock feels very aware, as though he was meant to prepare more for this monumental occasion. If John minds, he doesn’t say, just sets his things down and goes back downstairs.

They sit in companionable silence until dinner, at which point John asks Sherlock what he’d like to eat. 

“Don’t mind,” he replies, barely glancing up from the book he’s reading. It’s all about bees and Sherlock is absolutely engrossed in it, until -

“I like this. Being back. Home,” John says casually.

Sherlock can’t help the wide grin spreading across his face as he looks up at John, into his soft eyes. John grins back.

“Chinese?”

————————

“You always do this!” John yells at him, and it’s all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. John is corners and soft grass and white sheets. Why is he yelling so much?

“Don’t do that - don’t tune me out, Sherlock, I swear if you…” but Sherlock can’t help it. At least he’s staying this time. John should be pleased. Why isn’t he more pleased? He’s walked out on the last two fights, and John was furious about that. More than anything it was that, he said. The fact that he just up and left without letting the argument come to a head, without letting them explode and then implode, make up. John says the best part of any fight is the make-up, but Sherlock wouldn’t know. He doesn’t think there _is_ a best part to all of this. 

It’s all wrong because John loves him - he said so - and he promised that they wouldn’t fight like this anymore. It’s all wrong because he loves John too much to look at him while his face goes red and he huffs a breath out of his nostrils, soldier mode engaged.

“Right. That’s it,” John says, and it’s worse than falling off a building and being uncertain about whether you’ll survive, and he’d know. 

“That’s it?” he replies.

“That’s it.”

John turns around, grabs his jacket, wallet, phone and keys from the kitchen and looks at Sherlock one last time. Nods. Walks out.

And when he doesn’t even bother to slam the front door, Sherlock crumbles, recognising the finality in all of it. He sinks to the floor, tears streaming down his face, wondering where it all went so poorly. Wondering how on earth he couldn’t have been better for this, the one thing that mattered more than anything else has ever mattered in his entire pathetic excuse for a life.

He doesn’t move, not even after the lights outside come on and the entire flat is dark and silent. It doesn’t feel real. It feels too real. He sleeps on the couch, knows better than to wait for John to come back, but waits anyway, stuck in a fitful half-sleep. He never does.


	2. Chapter 2

It feels like falling in love all over again. John is back home - has been for two weeks now - and they’ve slipped back into what they had before Moriarty tore them apart. Before the rooftop. There was a case last week, a 6 at best, but that isn’t it. It’s that John is here when Sherlock comes home from an experiment. It’s that he wakes up to the smell of freshly made coffee. It’s that he has someone to talk to besides the skull.

Sherlock doesn’t take cab rides alone anymore. John’s there and it’s almost easy to take it for granted. Almost. There’s more, of course. Since John’s wedding, when he finally, _finally_ allowed himself to feel… all of it, he hasn’t been able to turn it off. It’s not that he didn’t know how he felt about John, how expansive and frightening it could be, he just never stopped trying to repress it, constantly. Between _not gay_ and _married to my work_ , it didn’t seem like a viable option. The problem is, when you leave home for two years and come back only to not _have_ a home anymore, you have to stop pushing those feelings away. And, in true Sherlock Holmes fashion, he had the epiphany too late. The epiphany that said, _There could’ve been something there_. The one that told him he should’ve tried. So instead, he said _I love you_ without _saying_ I love you and went home to the coldest, loneliest flat on earth.

That night, while he imagined Mary and John dancing through their reception, kissing and looking at each other with the adoration of newly-wedded bliss, he curled up on the couch and said goodbye, in his own way (if chain-smoking until 3am constitutes a goodbye). He felt like a kite without a string. John was always the thing holding him together, the person who was there when the babbling in his head seemed to turn to yelling. And then John wasn’t. Sherlock was floating. Lost.

He tried to move on, with cases and experiments and, yes, even old addictions, but nothing helped. John didn’t belong to him anymore (and the realisation that he never actually had was somewhat of a blow, too). There was nothing he could do to make John be his because John didn’t _want_ to be his. That’s what stung the most. That the only person he could truly say he’d ever loved would rather be with someone else, kilometres away in another bed. 

One early evening, he saw them in the street. Almost called out for them, until he saw their joined hands. John had a lazy smile on his face, and Mary was yammering on with enthusiasm. There may as well have been a big, neon sign that said _NOT YOU, SHERLOCK HOLMES_ , because that’s how loud the hurt was. He turned around before he could be seen and went home. The drugs started soon after, first as an innocent one-night escape, then a justified case-helping move. Underneath it all, Sherlock couldn’t even lie to himself about it. Not when his heart was flayed open the way it was - had been for months.

When Mary turned out to be… well, not Mary, it just became even more complicated. Sherlock had to push John back to her, even though it was the opposite of what he wanted to do. Moriarty appearing on every screen in England just made it more so. It turned out that Mary’s lies couldn’t be forgiven anymore, especially as premeditated as they were. Sherlock was just glad that it didn’t have to turn truly ugly, and that ‘Mary’ had helped them, in her way. She led them to Moran, confessed her infidelity (through a seven-worded postcard, much to John’s delight) and managed to vanish before MI6 could _make_ her vanish. On paper, it was tidy, but Sherlock had learned that human emotions were a minefield, turning something simple into a messy affair at every turn. John was devastated. Wouldn’t talk to him for weeks and weeks, until one day, a single text asking to move back home. _Home_. 

There are still mountains between them, but they are both _home_ , so the mountains can wait. Sherlock has a lot of things he should be saying, confessing, he knows, but he doesn't want to lose this. At least not yet. He spends many afternoons on the couch, hands steepled under his jaw, contemplating it. The conclusion is always _not now._ There is too much vulnerability still. John grows lighter and lighter as the days wear on, but Sherlock is sure he isn't at the point where he wants to invite another ‘psychopath’ into his life. Not like that. 

Sherlock is sometimes almost sure that John could love him but, at other times, it seems like an impossibility. How could the sun deign to love a mere mortal - and an undeserving one at that? He shines on him, every day, and that is enough. Well, it will have to be enough, because it’s what is available.

On a Thursday afternoon, when it is so hot that they have to open every window in the flat, Sherlock feels like there is a strong _almost_. John makes tea, with ridiculous claims that it will actually cool them down, and when he hands a cup to Sherlock, his eyes linger longer than usual. Neither of them speak, even though Sherlock’s brain is whirring out love confessions from stupid classic films (a case involving a cinephile who left clues from movie endings - barely a 4):  


“I love you, Most ardently.”  


“I'm also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”  


“You had me at hello”  


“We’ll always have Paris.”  
  
“I wanted it to be you. I wanted it to be you so badly.”

And, Sherlock’s favourite: “I’m scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I’m with you.”  
  
There is something heated in the prolonged eye contact. Eventually, John’s eyes soften and he nods slightly, moving his gaze down to his own teacup. 

And that is their version of a love confession. No swelling music or chases to airports. It has always been difficult between the two of them. They speak without words and their silences hold everything they can not - will not - articulate. 


	3. Chapter 3

John has never been good at breakups. Relationships, sure. He’s a romantic at heart (everybody says so), and he knows how to be the other half of a couple. Breakups are a different story. He hates endings and goodbyes, always has. With Mary, though, their story seemed to wrap up long before goodbyes were ever said. The only thing he feels for her now is guilt, at the fact that he took it so well. What does it say about them and, more importantly, about him as a person? His marriage dissolved before his eyes - and in the worst possible way - and he actually, mostly, felt a sense of relief. His obligation was over. It isn’t that he never loved her. He truly, truly did, at a stage. It’s just that she was never the love of his life. That was clear from the very start, really. 

Right now, John is eating dinner with the person that fills that role. They’re at the kitchen table and Sherlock is in a horrible mood, for no reason whatsoever. He’s pushing around his takeaway chow fun with his fork and making it abundantly clear that he’s having a sulk. Normally, this would bother John immensely, but he’s too content with just being home to let it affect him. Because all of it is home to him - the good days and the bad. Sherlock’s difficulties are par for the course, should he choose to stay. And he fully intends on doing so (as long as possible, that is). 

“Are you going to eat that?” John asks, amused. 

Sherlock just sighs, carries on pushing the noodles about.

“I’m off to Tesco in a bit. We need a few things.”

“Do you miss her?”

And the question knocks John so completely that he stupidly answers:

“Miss who?”

Even though there could only be one person to which Sherlock is referring.

Sherlock looks at John through narrowed eyes. Ever the patient one.

“I don’t know. Sometimes,” John sighs. “Not really.”

“Why not?”

John just stares at him for a few moments, the shock having jolted all speech out of his mouth.

“Don’t know. Just. Don’t?” he replies eventually.

“How can you love someone - or claim to, anyway - and not feel something for them when they’re gone?” Sherlock addresses the question to the tabletop.

“Wh- Sorry, what?”

“You love Mary, correct? Said so on many occasions. I’m sure you placed much emphasis on the fact during your wedding vows. And yet, since you’ve been here, at least, you show no sign of mourning the life you once shared. How is that possible?”

By now, John feels as though he has missed an entire thread of the conversation, as it’s one of the oddest he’s ever been subject to.

“I did love her, yes, but other things happened. She shot you, for starters,” John is surprisingly calm despite his bewilderment. 

“That’s neither here nor there,” Sherlock flaps his hand, dismissing the very notion.

“Sher- Surely that’s _extremely_ here or there. One of the _most_ here or there things to happen.” 

“Because I’m your best friend?”

“Well. Yes.”

“But it shouldn’t matter, in the end, because it was your love story. The love story of John and Mary. I was merely a side character, perhaps even a supporting role,” Sherlock says, as though it’s the most rational thing on earth.

John can’t help but laugh. It starts out as a slight chuckle but soon, there are tears rolling down his cheeks and he can barely breathe. All the while, Sherlock looks at him in confusion, a little crinkle forming between his eyebrows. It makes John laugh harder. 

“What’s so funny?” Sherlock demands. He’s starting to become angry. Never likes being laughed at.

“That is the most absurd thing I’ve ever heard. ‘The love story of John and Mary’. What on _earth_ are you talking about?” John says between chuckles.

“If it were a film -“

“Which it isn’t.”

“Right, which it isn’t. But if it were, your and Mary’s relationship would be the central part. Everything else would exist merely to encourage your union. Themes, subplots, characters. Of which I’d be one.”

“What if the film weren’t about me and Mary, though?” John asks, feeling solemn all of a sudden.

Sherlock doesn’t understand, so he just keeps quiet, prompting further explanation.

“What if it was about something else? Some _one_ else?” John doesn’t bother with pretension - he looks very pointedly at Sherlock, holding eye contact.

“Some- Oh. _Oh_.”

“Yes.”

Sherlock just stares back, eyes doing that annoying blinking thing he does when he’s overwhelmed. Eventually, though, it just starts to worry John, because he notices that Sherlock is barely even breathing, either.

“Sherlock.”

More blinking.

“Sherlock.”

“What?”

“Relax.” John reaches across the table to take Sherlock’s hand. Ground him. 

Sherlock responds by staring at their joined hands. Blinks some more. 

“Breathe.”

“Breathing’s boring,” he answers reflexively.

“Why don’t you use your words? How do you feel about that?”

“About what?”

“About what I’ve just said. About what we’re discussing. About the thing that’s making you blink like a bloody lunatic.”

“Oh. Fine, fine. I feel fine.”

“Great to know. How do you feel _in response_?”

“Oh. Well. Fine, too.”

They just look at each other. John smiles. Sherlock smiles back. Laughs. Soon enough, they’re just laughing. At the timing, at the simplicity of it. At everything. It doesn’t feel like catharsis, but it should be. This has been a very, very, very, _very_ long time coming. 


	4. Chapter 4

Of all the ways Sherlock has imagined John kissing him - and there have been an abundance, he isn’t even ashamed to admit - this exceeds all expectations. It isn’t about the feeling in the air or what was said before or during. It’s just how _tangible_ it is. How within his grasp John actually is. 

One minute they’re laughing together, John having essentially told Sherlock that he’s the person in the love story of his life and the next, John is leaning over the table, over their joined hands, to offer Sherlock a slow, chaste peck. Fortunately, Sherlock’s mind hasn’t gone completely berserk, because he thinks quick enough to nip at John’s bottom lip, holding them together. What follows is the most uncomfortable kiss imaginable - two grown men leaning over their food to reach each other. But none of it matters. It doesn’t even matter _how_ they got here. All that matters, to Sherlock at least, is that they’re here. Finally. _Finally_. 

“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” John murmurs between kisses.

“Because you didn’t,” Sherlock responds before licking at John’s top lip, then entering for more glorious contact.

After a while, John seems to come to himself, because he breaks away, asks, “You’re sure?”

It’s laughable, really, because _of course_ he’s sure; has never _been_ more sure, and yet it’s just like John Watson to be so considerate.

“Yes.”

“Really? Because if… if you felt even the slightest bit unsure, I’d want to know. I’d _need_ to know. I don’t think I can have this. Us. If you aren’t sure.”

“I’m sure,” Sherlock says, punctuating the point with another kiss.

“Well then,” John replies, lovely red heat creeping up his neck and onto his face, “If you’re sure, why don’t we move this to the bedroom?”

Sherlock just smiles, cranes his head to the side, willing John to lead, which he gladly does. 

Once they’re in Sherlock’s room, he _does_ start to feel a bit unsure. Not about them, or the beginning of their story as more than friends. He’s more unsure about what to do with his hands, where to stand, how to make the move that will cement what is so new, yet so anticipated. 

Luckily for him, John is one step ahead. He walks over to Sherlock, stands a few centimetres away from him and looks up into his eyes.

“Hey,” he says through a tiny grin.

“Hey.”

“You okay?”

John looks concerned now, and Sherlock wants to punch himself for making his self-doubt known. 

“I’m fine. Just. Nervous, I suppose.”

John’s face softens at that. He reaches up to stroke Sherlock’s cheek, kisses the side of his mouth.

“There’s no need. It’s just me,” he whispers in the small space between them. 

It’s all the reassurance Sherlock needs. He wraps his arms around John’s smaller frame, feeling as though he needs to squeeze away the room where they aren’t directly touching.

Eventually, it isn’t enough to just be kissing. They collapse onto the unmade bed, a tangle of limbs. Sherlock holds onto John as tight as he possibly can, not wanting him to dissipate like a daydream. John undresses them, slowly, looking Sherlock in the eyes all the while. It’s enough to make Sherlock shiver with desire and expectation. John chuckles a little at this and just that small moment makes Sherlock’s chest feel as though it’s about to burst open, it’s too full. Of love, he supposes. It travels upwards, making itself known with the dampness in his eyes. John looks at him tenderly, affectionately, as he rakes his hands through Sherlock’s hair, his own eyes moistening a little bit.

There are no words, just the slide of bodies against each other, slow and sweet. This isn’t the time for rushing. This is a time for appreciation and worship. The lamplight is soft enough to make John look like he’s made of liquid gold, and Sherlock can do nothing but show him, without words, how deep his love extends. How far he’s willing to go for this man. When Sherlock finishes, it’s with John’s name on his breath. John follows soon after, a series of groans, and he captures Sherlock’s mouth again, and it feels like everything Sherlock ever wanted - _needed_ \- and more. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Follow me on tumblr](http://johnwatso.tumblr.com)


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